


Almost

by ReminiscentLullaby



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Gabriel has fallen in love, Mutual Pining, Nathalie has let him, Pining, Post-Episode: s03 Miracle Queen (The Battle of the Miraculous Part 2), Post-Season/Series 03, Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, previously posted on tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:20:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22230193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReminiscentLullaby/pseuds/ReminiscentLullaby
Summary: The peacock miraculous is fixed and Nathalie is recovering. With everything slowly beginning to look up for them, it seems that Nathalie and Gabriel have a lot less to lose.It presents a much different problem.
Relationships: Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth/Nathalie Sancoeur
Comments: 7
Kudos: 93
Collections: GabeNath Book Club and Art Club Server





	Almost

**Author's Note:**

> I'm dealing with an extreme lack of motivation and energy these days. Having a lot of trouble trying to come up with some new stuff, so this is a one-shot I wrote a couple months ago. :) Enjoy.

One month after the peacock miraculous was fixed, Nathalie stopped coughing. 

Her affliction had been dying slowly. For about 24 hours after Miracle Queen’s defeat, she could hardly manage to walk, but the moment she was back on her feet, the illness had begun to ease its way out of her body. Dizzy spells became less frequent, and coughing fits less severe. Even Adrien noticed how the color started to return to her face, and made a comment about two weeks down the road to recovery that her stride seemed more energized than it had been in months. A few days here and there were hampered by a relapse, but they were nothing she couldn’t handle. 

She remembered how the first time she used the newly-repaired miraculous, she whispered her detransformation phrase and waited for the weakness to strike. She held her breath, expecting it to break open into a bout of uncontrollable coughing, the same way it always had. When she had the bravery to exhale, she found that her breath rode smoothly out of her lungs and into the air. A pleasant chill settled on her skin at the ease of the rhythm now flowing in and out of her body. 

She remembered Gabriel watching her carefully, remembered his hand on her back, remembered the silence of his own breathlessness as he wondered to himself if he had truly managed to fix the miraculous, if he hadn’t failed her. She remembered the look on his face when she turned around and smiled, and how that smile felt different on her lips than all the ones she would force herself to give when she was feeling at her worst. She was far from her worst now. She could smile and actually mean it. 

She remembered how his hand had fallen away as she angled her body to face him, and how, while she smiled, she realized how strange it felt to not have that touch on her body. She remembered, in the thrill of feeling completely normal, that she quickly built the courage and reach out with her hand, hoping he would take it. She remembered how his fingers readily intertwined with her own, and how a moment passed, and he decided that it wasn’t enough, and so he enveloped her in his arms instead. That was their celebration, they told themselves. She was free. To be this happy only made sense. 

It also made sense that he would still worry, because it was taking time to get better. It made sense that those moments where a cough or two or three would escape her lungs that he’d flinch and stare at her in alarm. It made sense that when the dizzy spells struck, and she swayed on her feet, that he would grab her and lead her, arm around her waist, to a place to sit. And that while she sat, she’d meet his eyes and tell him she was okay, and that he might not believe her, and choose to stay at her side. 

She told herself, as she stood in the bathroom mirror at night, running a comb through her hair after a shower, that it made sense he would still be afraid, even after her symptoms have almost entirely disappeared. This peacock miraculous, which hid in the pocket of her blazer thrown somewhere in her room, had been the very thing that took his wife away from him. Now, it was fixed, and it wasn’t going to hurt Nathalie like it hurt Emilie. She told herself that maybe, just maybe, it made him feel better to believe something could still go wrong. His wife lay motionless in a coffin beneath the house, and Nathalie was healthy, living proof that there had always been another answer. Another answer he simply had no way to see. She told herself that he was being eaten up inside, because if he had managed to save Nathalie, then how,  _ how _ could he fail to save his wife? 

Of course, it may have made him feel better to anticipate that something could go terribly wrong, but Nathalie had enough sense to know he didn’t actually want it to. He had started telling her things like, “I need you”, “I’m worried about you”, “I’m sorry for doting, you’re just important to me.

“And everything you’ve done means so much.” 

As she folded her clothes and left them out on the armchair at the corner of the room for tomorrow, she told herself that soon enough, he would get used to her being okay. He would get used to having no reason to stand so near or take her hand or let his gaze linger, worrying that she might crumble if he looked away for too long. She told herself that now she was at her full strength as Mayura, Ladybug and Chat Noir’s miraculous were closer to the grasps than ever before, and surely, it couldn’t be much longer now. Once Gabriel had them, all of this could be over. All of the waiting and the fighting and the guilt, the guilt for failing, the guilt for what came after, could leave them. Leave them just like the illness had left her. 

She got into bed and told herself that all of this was temporary. She turned off the light and told herself that his closeness and his touch and his eyes would abandon her soon enough. She laid in the darkness and told herself that it was never hers at all. 

But the voice of reason in her head was getting harder and harder to listen to. She shivered at the breath on her ear as he whispered sparse details of his plans to her when they passed in the foyer. And she smiled knowing he didn’t have to do it. They were already alone together most of the time, behind the closed door of the atelier. They were free to speak aloud and yet he whispered when he had the opportunity, when they were standing close enough to justify it. And when his fingers brushed against hers as he handed her a tablet or a phone or the mug of her coffee he’d asked to take a sip of on a manic morning, she could never bring herself to look him in the face. She wondered if he knew what he was doing. She wondered if she knew that she was letting him. She wondered if she even cared. 

Failure, she found, wasn’t becoming easier to bear, and a particularly devastating defeat left him hidden away with Emilie in the crypt for hours. He hadn’t reached for Nathalie when she detransformed as his habit dictated, he had barely spared her a glance at all. They’d come close, unbelievably close, but last minute quick thinking by Ladybug flipped the odds against them all at once, and they had fizzled out from there. If they hadn’t been an inch from victory, maybe it wouldn’t have stung so badly, but even Nathalie, who in all these situations could tame the flames in his blood by the sound of her voice and gentleness of her touch, found herself seething. Unlike Gabriel, she didn’t have a place to hide when the world went dark. She’d let him go, stuck herself behind her computer screen and tried desperately to churn out a report despite her dismay. But she was disappointed, and angry, and she missed the hand on her shoulder, to catch her even though she had stopped falling. She missed the glances across the room. She missed  _ him _ , and he hadn’t been gone very long. 

And when he came back, he appeared to go straight to work, the same way she’d pretended to, his fingers moving across the screen and his eyes glaring hotly from beneath his brow. The peacock miraculous still pinned to her sweater, Nathalie sighed at the waves of distress flowing in her direction like wind. She rose to her feet, brave and sad and wanting him back, as dangerous as that was. 

“Gabriel, are you okay?”

He didn’t reply, though his hand paused, hovering an inch above his work. 

“It was a hard loss,” she murmured. “Really hard.” She began making her way towards him, prepared to stop if he were to indicate he didn’t want her any closer. So far, he remained completely still, but she could see his stormy eyes working as they darted between his hand and the screen and her shoes. “I wish I knew what to say, what to do. I understand it hurts, that you might need to just sit with it, but if there’s anything you need…”

“I need this to be over,” he finally replied, and as he spoke, he also looked into her face. She saw then all of the pain she was already feeling in her miraculous, saw it in the lines of his face and in the shape of the shadows drawn across it. “I’m exhausted.”

She was at his side now. She remembered her courage, the reaching of her hand across the space between them. “I know,” Nathalie said quietly, sympathetically. She remembered the smiles she was starting to mean, how she wished she could mean it right now. 

He took her offer, and she remembered how his fingers usually intertwined with hers and how now they closed around her hand. Now his thumb caressed the tendons under her skin. “Every day, defeat becomes harder to swallow. For a time, I wondered if I could get used to it, if it could just stop hurting. But something always comes along to remind me of how unbearable this is.” 

“You’ll be okay, Gabriel. Today was difficult, but we’ve made it this far,” she encouraged. She remembered him watching her carefully. The caution was gone now. Everything the miraculous was telling her was there in his eyes. They looked bluer, like sky. 

He squeezed her hand. “Thanks to you.” 

A step of space was lost between them. “It’s nothing,” she whispered.

“It’s everything, Nathalie.” 

His voice broke. It was too much for him to take. 

She remembered how a moment passed and he decided that it wasn’t enough. 

She remembered how he enveloped her in his arms instead.

“Everything you do means so much.” 

_ She remembered how it wasn’t enough _ .

“I’d be lost without you, Nathalie.” 

She drew away, remembering the silence of his breathlessness. The silence of hers. They wondered what was about to break. 

She remembered his hand on her back. 

“I’m always here for you.”

On her face. 

“I…”

How clear and how dark his eyes looked when they were inches from her own. Like the firmament hiding above the Paris lights which drowned it out. 

She wished for total blackness, so she could see only him. 

“Gabriel…”

If she’d said anymore, her lips would have brushed against his. 

To be this desperate only made sense. 

She closed her eyes. She shuddered, suddenly freezing. 

Way too much sense. 

Panic shot between them. They pulled back at the same time, eyes wide and blazing, and Nathalie whirled away so swiftly that for a moment, her dizziness returned. Her hand cupped her mouth, protecting the lips that were yet ungrazed by his own. Her breaths were quick and shallow and she tried to keep them silent, but perhaps the pounding of her heart beneath her miraculous was loud enough for him to hear. 

_ Regret _ , he was feeling. 

But was it regret that he had leaned in or regret that he had pulled away? 

Nathalie wasn’t sure if she could answer that question for herself.

She pressed her eyes closed, trying to control the onslaught of her own shame by taming the trembling of her hands. It took another moment to compose herself before she was able to adjust her posture, force her head to look forward and trace the lines in the pattern on the door. She made for her desk without another word, without even looking at him, and when she arrived, she made sure her computer screen blocked him from view.

For just a handful of seconds, she could sense him watching her. And then, he looked away. She heard him exhale deeply, heard it waver, heard the pain in his very breath. 

Nathalie told herself all of this was temporary. Nathalie told herself it would leave her soon enough. Nathalie told herself it wasn’t hers at all. Nathalie told herself  _ it didn’t matter _ . 

Nathalie lied to herself and said if they were strong enough to resist each other than they were strong enough for anything. 


End file.
